Take Note U.S.: The World's Best Science-Inspired Currency Designs
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Thursday, Aug 26, 2010
For its entry into a competition being run by New York designer Richard Smith, Dowling Duncan has redesigned the American dollar in a vertical format, with new imagery and fonts. They want to “rebrand the US Dollar, rebuild financial confidence and revive our failing economy.”
And, if dollars are the primary material symbol of our economy, remind people that our economy isn’t just about dead Presidents. In fact, it probably has more to do with science, industry and ingenuity.
But apart from a much deserved recognition of Indian America, this is the only redesign in the collection that reflects American ingenuity. For all of their radical newness, Dowling Duncan’s new bills are much of the same: Presidents, eagles, monumental buildings. Why not more designs that embrace the spirit of that $20 bill and go further, honoring the memory of our greatest inventors and scientists? After all, the rest of the world has been doing it for decades.
A Little Tour of the World’s Science Currency
Hopefully this little rundown of some of my favorites from around the world can inspire some new American currency design. We may have trouble getting money for science, but perhaps we can get some science on money.
Charles Darwin , 2 British pound coin (2009)
Lord Kelvin, 100 British Pounds, Clydesdale Bank (1996).
Sir Isaac Newton, 1 British Pound
Sejong the Great, 10000 South Korean Won (2007)
Louis Pasteur, 5 French Francs (1966). Obsolete.
Niels Bohr, 500 Danish Kroner (2002)
Albert Einstein, 5 Israeli Lirot (1968). Obsolete.
Erwin Schrödinger, 1000 Austrian Schilling (1983). Obsolete.
Lord Ernest Rutherford, 100 New Zealand Dollars
Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham, 10000 Iraqi Dinar (2005)
Abu Nasr al-Farabi, 1 Kazakhstani Tenge (1993)
Nikola Tesla, 100 Serbian Dinar (2003)
Oswaldo Cruz, 50 Brazilian Cruzados (1986-8?). Cruz was a medical doctor and a father of sanitation. This note is now obsolete.
Johannes Kepler, Austria 10 Euro coin
Viktor Ambartsumian, 100 Armenian Dram (1998).
Apart from scientists, some countries have put scientific inventions and phenomena on their currency.
When Italian finance minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi mandated that Italy’s 1 Euro coin would carry the Vitruvian man of Leonardo da Vinci, he pointed to its symbolism of the Renaissance focus on man as the measure of all things. Ciampi noted that the new currency would represent the “coin to the service of Man”, rather than man to the service of money.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, 1 Euro coin, Italy (2005).
Total Solar Eclipse, 2000 Romanian Lei (1999)
US Space Shuttle, 5 British Pounds, Northern Bank (1999). Out of print.
Aryabhata Satellite, 2 Indian Rupees (1983) The satellite was named after the Indian mathematician Aryabhata. Obsolete.
Of course, we do have scientists on our money. They also happen to be statesmen – but they only appear on some of the rarest of bills, the $2 and and $100:
Special thanks to Jacob Lewis Bourjaily, whose website offers 600 dpi scans of each of these notes and others.
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Email: alexp at motherboard dot tv. @pasternack,
